


Beautifully Frozen

by dragonshost



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25301134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonshost/pseuds/dragonshost
Summary: Many years ago, Invel saw a thing of beauty he would never forget.
Relationships: Gray Fullbuster/Invel Yura
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Beautifully Frozen

A child, no more than ten or twelve years old, squeezed past the legs of the tourists crowding around the town’s central plaza. It was difficult going, as he was very small for his age to begin with and the people were so densely clustered. It was his last chance to see the main attraction for the winter festival before everything was disassembled. He’d been waiting as patiently as he could for days while helping his parents pack for their move to Alvarez.

“Invel! Invel!!” he could faintly hear his mother calling over the noise of the festival, but he ignored her and continued to push his way through the maze of legs. He knew what she wanted - his brief afternoon of visiting the festival booths was already at an end with the stirrings of a snowstorm on the horizon. But he refused to leave before he could see the thing he had most desperately wanted to.

It was with a final push that he popped out ahead of the crowd of onlookers, eliciting several complaints from the people he’d displaced.

But Invel didn’t hear them. Not really. He was too entranced by what lay ahead of him.

The entire plaza had been transformed into a garden of ice sculptures, blue and ethereal. Invel’s eyes roamed over them, for where one ended, another began. Elegant egrets took flight from glass-like pools of ice from where fish flipped and shark fins arose. Standing on its hind legs, a frozen bear stared out at the crowd. A ship sailed the icy “sea”, with four masts and delicate lines of rigging and frozen silhouettes of people at the oars at battle against a sea monster rising from the deep. Lines of torches bearing frozen fire stood in one corner, near a grape arbor heavy with frozen globes of fruit. Miniature tigers fought a miniature elephant near the ship. And many, many more things that Invel could not identify at all. But in the center of it all stood a small castle, with battlements and flags and portcullis. Stings of frozen beads emanated out from the castle, reaching to the edges of the plaza and winding around poles covered in frozen tendrils of ivy.

Everything glimmered and glowed with the rapidly fading light against the backdrop of dark gray approaching from behind. A red cloth rope held back onlookers from disturbing or climbing upon the beautiful works of art.

Invel was struck by the beauty and artistry of it all. It seared itself into his soul with cold flame - an indelible mark he never wanted to be rid of. He’d heard that the city council had hired an ice mage to set up this display, but he’d never anticipated that it would be this wonderful.

A black-haired teenager stood nearby Invel, and peered at him curiously. “What do you think?” he asked the child, startling Invel a bit.

“It’s amazing,” Invel breathed, his eyes barely wavering from the sight. “I want to look at it forever.”

A smile cracked the teenager’s face. “Ha!” he chuckled. “It’ll all melt when the weather warms up. It is all ice, after all. But I’ll bet that they’ll take it down as soon as the festival is over.”

Invel whirled to look at the teenager properly, fury coursing through his veins. “I know that!” he snapped. “I’m not a child!”

The teenager held his hands up in surrender. “I can see that! I’m sorry if I was rude.”

Now that Invel was looking at him, this teenager was incredibly weird. For one, he wasn’t wearing pants. Or a shirt. Or shoes. Who in their right might went around without clothes in this sort of weather? Was he just trying to show off the tattoo on his chest? Invel didn’t really see the point, since he couldn’t even tell what the tattoo was. And as much as he disliked being bundled up tightly himself, Invel knew that people needed to at least wear _something_ when it was cold out, or they’d start losing body parts to it.

“Why are you naked?” Invel asked him bluntly. “You’re going to poke someone’s eye out if you don’t wear a shirt.”

Sighing, the teenager shook his head. “I would if I knew where my shirt went. I’ll keep that in mind for the future though.” Then he smiled again. “Thanks for what you said earlier though.”

Before Invel could puzzle out what the older boy meant by that, he felt a harsh grip on his arm. Letting out a yelp of surprise, he looked up into the worried and angry gaze of his mother. Without further ado, she set to lecturing him as she began to drag him away from the display and from the weird boy.

But Invel wasn’t ready to leave this magical place behind just yet. He dug in his heels, feeling as if his heart was being ripped out with every inch he was forced to give way.

The teenager grinned and waved at him. “I’ll be back for next year’s festival, too! Come and see my new display then, okay?”

Frigid tears pricked at Invel’s eyes as everything disappeared behind the crowd once more.

He wouldn’t be back the next year, of course. He was moving across an ocean, after all.

Invel hoped desperately that Alvarez had snow and ice.

He wasn’t sure if he could bear never knowing such beauty ever again.


End file.
